Hip-hop producer-hosts, beat battles, and online music production communities on Twitch

Abstract

The livestreaming platform Twitch has become a home for online beat battle events, communalcompetitions among music producers which originated in hip hop culture. This paper investigates thefactors that led to the adoption of Twitch by beatmakers and the formation of communities based aroundparticipation in livestreamed events. We consider the event hosts crucial to establishing beat battles onTwitch, and define them as a new creative industry actor, the ‘producer-host’, whose novel culturalpractices combine several roles: performing artist, music production educator, event manager, livestreambroadcaster, and community manager. Drawing on 18 months of ethnography, active communityparticipation, and interviews with three producer-hosts, we analyse beat battles on Twitch to understandparticipants’ motivations and the consequences of these cultural interactions for music producercommunities. This article contributes to scholarship on expanding uses of livestreaming platforms anddebates around the democratisation and platformisation of cultural production.

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ORCID for Steven Gamble: orcid.org/0000-0002-2823-3864

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